The visitors
swarmed up poles and down ropes and would not be denied entrance. Wads
of cotton smeared with vaseline and bandaged around the fastenings of
the hammock proved no obstacle. It was impossible to sleep; mosquitoes
came to the assistance of the ants and managed to find their way
through the mosquito-net. To complete the general "cheerfulness,"
the tree-tops were full of little spider-monkeys whispering mournfully
throughout the dark and showery night.
The second day's march took us through the region which the Chief
had explored the year before, and we spent the night in another
_tambo_ built on that occasion. Our progress, however, was made with
increasing difficulty, as the land had become more hilly and broken
and the forest, if possible, more dense and wild. We were now at a
considerable distance from the river-front and in a region where the
yearly inundation could never reach. This stage of the journey remains
among the few pleasant memories of that terrible expedition, through
what I may call the gastronomic revel with which it ended. Jerome had
succeeded in bringing down with his muzzle-loader a _mutum_, a bird
which in flavour and appearance reminds one of a turkey, while I was so
lucky as to bag a nice fat deer (marsh-deer).
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